[jtfanclub]

Unless I am confused, hands 4 and 6 have the same vulnerability. If that is the case, I don't have any problem with 'to play, may be pre-emptive/gambling' as the explanation, not when there's several cases where he had the monster hand (which, if he didn't include, would make it illegal).

[fred]

officeglen, on Feb 26 2007, 07:47 PM, said:

Let's wait for the examples...

OK - my personal opinion is many of these examples are "normal" many are "weird" and none are clear "psychs" (but a couple are not that far off).

So in my opinion you will be doing your duty if you make your explanation "To play, but maybe an unusual hand" (or similar).

And of course if your opponents ask you for more information you should be honest and say something like:

I might have a very strong balanced hand (if so then no specific point count) but I might also have a long suit. If I have a long suit it rates to be strong (but does not rate to be solid) and I rate to have something resembling a stopper in at least 2 of the side suits.

No doubt other players/TDs will have different opinions as to whether your examples are weird/normal/psychs. You might get in trouble at some point, but you probably won't deserve it (at least not if your future example hands are like the past example hands and if you continue to try to be forthcoming with your explanations).

Fred Gitelman
bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[kenrexford]

After reviewing the examples, I'll toss in one vote for "weird, but OK." Not one of these examples seemed like a 3NT without play. Bizarre as a technique, but if it works it works.

[Walddk]

As an aside, out of curiosity, how do you want your partner to judge further action if your 3NT can be examples 10 as well as 11? Or do you have the agreement that she is not allowed to bid over your 3NT opening?

Roland

[bid_em_up]

Glen,

For all your references to the rules claiming the bid to be legal, I submit the following objection. according to the North American Laws of Duplicate Bridge:

"SECTION SIX
CONVENTIONS AND AGREEMENTS

LAW 40
PARTNERSHIP UNDERSTANDINGS
A. Right to Choose Call or Play
A player may make any call or play (including an intentionally misleading call - such as a psychic bid - or a call or play that departs from commonly accepted, or previously announced, use of a convention), without prior announcement, provided that such call or play is not based on a partnership understanding.

B. Concealed Partnership Understandings Prohibited
A player may not make a call or play based on a special partnership understanding unless an opposing pair may reasonably be expected to understand its meaning, or unless his side discloses the use of such call or play in accordance with the regulations of the sponsoring organization."

As far as I am concerned, if you can't explain it any better than "to play, may be a variety of hands", then its a concealed partnership understanding, imo. An opposing pair will have no idea as to what hand type you "may" have without doing some serious grilling of your methods. Having seen you open 3N on a variety of hands, your partner, by default, will be more acutely aware of what hands you "might" have for the bid, even if there is no explicit agreement for it.

Do you open it on long suit with a couple of side suit stops? Solid suits with side stops (or partial stops in the other suits)?Weak hands? Strong and balanced? Sometimes you do it and sometimes you dont? Frequently have a stiff honor in a suit? You bid it whenever you feel like the final contract will end up being 3N and you wish to ensure that you are declarer? Do you only do this when partner is passed hand? (The example hands dont reflect this info). Partner will be aware of all of these things, but the opponents will not be.

I cannot imagine this opening "style" being successful in the long run, even if it is deemed to be "legal". But thats another story.

jmoo.

[hrothgar]

fred, on Feb 26 2007, 10:37 PM, said:

officeglen, on Feb 26 2007, 07:32 PM, said:

fred, on Feb 26 2007, 02:30 PM, said:

But if part of your answer would be "hands that you would consider really weird" then you should mention this in your original explanation.

So do we like "to play, can be a variety of hands including weird ones" (perhaps too big for the white box)?

I think that would be an improvement.

But it is also an admission that you are playing systemic psychs.

And some tournaments won't allow that.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Personally, I think that its a mistake to drag the topic of psyches into this discussion. This is a CLASSIC example why I believe that the legal construct about "psyches" should be dropped from the laws and replaced with more useful categories.

Glen is playing a very wide ranging and fairly random method. He also admits to be using a mixed strategy. Sometimes he'll (randomly) decide to open a hand 3N. other times he'd open the same hand 1♠. However, this behaviour doesn't represent a violation of his agree system. Rather, this behaviour is systemic.

I readily admit that this type of method creates a lot of problems. Some of these are related to disclosure. Others are going to be related to the regulatry structure. Case in point: Glen admits that he's using mixed strategies. Furthermore, he is doing so in an ACBL event. The ACBL's GCC doesn't explictly sanction the use of mixed strategies. Therefore, he is using an illegal convention.

[jtfanclub]

bid_em_up, on Feb 26 2007, 03:39 PM, said:

A player may not make a call or play based on a [bold]special partnership understanding[/bold] unless an opposing pair may reasonably be expected to understand its meaning, or unless his side discloses the use of such call or play in accordance with the regulations of the sponsoring organization."

OK, you've seen probably every single time they've ever had a 3NT opener as far back as they can remember. What special partnership understand do you think they have?

I don't see any special partnership understanding here, except that opener is less likely to gamble when vulnerable, which is just bridge.

Do you play SAYC or 2/1 with a regular partner?

If so, suppose that you open 1♥ and he responds 4♥. I ask you for a detailed explanation of the bid. Pick one of your partners, and tell me what you would say. Remember, 'standard' is not a legal definition of the bid.

[cherdano]

jtfanclub, on Feb 26 2007, 02:53 PM, said:

If so, suppose that you open 1♥ and he responds 4♥. I ask you for a detailed explanation of the bid. Pick one of your partners, and tell me what you would say. Remember, 'standard' is not a legal definition of the bid.

Of course I can answer this question. Assuming equal vulnerability and a 1st or 2nd seat opening, my partner would have a weakish shapely hand with 4 or 5 trumps. If 4, then he has a lot of shape (as he could make a mixed raise to 3♥ instead). We don't interpret weak as having no lower limit, the hand will have one good suprise as far as playing strength is concerned (a singleton, or good trumps, etc.). A flat 5332 hand would often prefer a mixed raise as well. On the other end of the spectrum, a hand with 5 trumps to an honor, an ace and a singleton would be considered too strong.

I would give a different answer at favorable, at unfavorable, opposite a 3rd seat opening etc.
What's your point?

[bid_em_up]

jtfanclub, on Feb 26 2007, 03:53 PM, said:

bid_em_up, on Feb 26 2007, 03:39 PM, said:

A player may not make a call or play based on a special partnership understanding, unless an opposing pair may reasonably be expected to understand its meaning or unless his side discloses the use of such call or play in accordance with the regulations of the sponsoring organization."

OK, you've seen probably every single time they've ever had a 3NT opener as far back as they can remember. What special partnership understand do you think they have?

I don't see any special partnership understanding here, except that opener is less likely to gamble when vulnerable, which is just bridge.

Do you play SAYC or 2/1 with a regular partner?

If so, suppose that you open 1♥ and he responds 4♥. I ask you for a detailed explanation of the bid. Pick one of your partners, and tell me what you would say. Remember, 'standard' is not a legal definition of the bid.

1) This is not my wording, but the wording of the Laws. You also cut the bolding off at the point where it becomes most significant, unless an opposing pair may reasonably be expected to understand its meaning. There is no way you can claim that an opposing pair to be able to understand "well, sometimes its 25 balanced, and other times its 12 hcp and 7-3-2-1 with broken suit, and other times, its just that I am bored and want to play a hand so I bid 3N".

2) His partner has a better understanding of hand types that he might make this call on.

3) It isn't so much the fact that there is an EXPLICIT understanding. There isn't. But by default, partner has a better idea of the hand types the 3N bid may contain than the opponents can ever hope to, which makes it an IMPLICIT agreement.

Kind of like if your partner routinely bids 2S after 2H (X) and he does not hold spades. You become aware that he may not have them. You havent explicitly agreed to do this. Yes, it is a tactical bid. But you KNOW that your partner is prone to doing this. Making the bid implicitly agreed, alertable, and fully explainable.

4) Sorry, but I dont call this bridge.

5) Either, 2/1 preferred.

6) Why would I ever say standard? With my regular partners, the response is "5+ trumps, less than 8 hcp". I really dont understand the point of this question.

[inquiry]

Jlall, on Feb 26 2007, 04:15 PM, said:

This style of bidding is far more effective than most would expect.

This is a very interesting post too, none of your example hands looked like psyches though.

Well, I am not so sure it is effective. Glen is a good player and this is introducing randomness that is not working well for him in my opinion.

Here is the data. Glen and his partner (his wife I think) average over +1 imp and 56% in their tourment play (i assume mostly ACBL). when I look these hands up with Bridgebrowser, I can also get the average results just for hands that started 3NT...

The averages were:

15 hands at IMPs, average +0.51 imps (more than 0.5 less than normal avrage)
6 hands at MP, average 17.63% (only one above 50% and it was 53%).

This might have been perhaps the worse example of the method...

Scoring: IMP

3NT all pass,

Amazingly, this lost only 6.5 imps with 6S great and 7S odds on. So as he said, he wasn't punished as badly as he should have been for missing a slam. But if he had opened normally he would easily have found it.

---

Actually, I would recommend that Glen look at his success and failures and see how best it might be to utilize this bid. His big wins are not even clearly attributibable to the method.

A vul versus not vul opponent overcalled 4♥ on Kxx AQJxx Txxxx void and was killed with a double (win 14 imps). That one hand essetnailly accounts for ALL of the +.5 imp average. If 3NT is left to play, it is down probably 3 for not a good result, and he would have a minus imp average for these bids.

[DrTodd13]

That is not the right way to analyze this bid. It does not matter what the overall IMP average is. It only matters what the IMP average would be for the other ways of handling the hand types being rolled into 3N. By dividing hand types in certain ways I may create a system where all the hand types except one generate great results but I have to pay the price for the other hand type. To say you shouldn't use 3N could mean a complete system change that would alter all the good results you were getting with all your other opening bids. Having said that, I don't think this applies to this particular case. You're saying you can't roll 24bal hands into your pre-existing strong artificial opening...assuming you have such an opening? If the alternative to bidding 3N is passing or preempting some long suit then you have to compare what effect 3N is getting you versus the effect of eliminating those hand types from 3N would have on your other bids. In practice though, I tend to agree with Ben. It seems this is creating randomness for no particular reason.

[jtfanclub]

Quote

1) This is not my wording, but the wording of the Laws. You also cut the bolding off at the point where it becomes most significant, unless an opposing pair may reasonably be expected to understand its meaning.

How can the most important part be an 'unless'? If they don't have a special partnership understanding, then there is no 'unless'.

Quote

2) His partner has a better understanding of hand types that he might make this call on.

3) It isn't so much the fact that there is an EXPLICIT understanding. There isn't.  But by default, partner has a better idea of the hand types the 3N bid may contain than the opponents can ever hope to, which makes it an IMPLICIT agreement.
.
.
.
6) Why would I ever say standard?  With my regular partners, the response is "5+ trumps, less than 8 hcp".  I really dont understand the point of this question.

If you read Cherdano's answer, do you you understand the point of the question?

Of course it means more than 5+ trumps, less than 8 hcp. That might be your agreement, but with some partners they'd do it with some hands, with others it would be others. It also depends upon what seat partner is, and the vulnerability.

If you give an answer like Cherdano's every time, then absolutely, you have something to complain about on this 3NT opener. But when you give an answer like '5+ trumps, less than 8 hcp', then you're doing what they're doing. There's an implicit understanding, in both cases. Why is it illegal for them to play something without revealing any implicit tendencies (and we're talking tendencies here, not agreements- not one of those hands would surprise me as a 3NT opener) but it's legal for you to do so?

To Cherdano- it's because bid_em_up's level of explaining implicit agreements is standard here. You go above and beyond.

[blackshoe]

There are two questions here: is this opening legal under the GCC? Is the disclosure practiced by the partnership using this opening adequate?

A couple of things on the disclosure: whether there's room for complete disclosure, or time for complete disclosure, is irrelvenat. If you are asked a question about your partnership's methods, you are required to fully and completely disclose all information arising from partnership agreement and partnership experience about the method. As the ACBL alert regulation says "Any request for information should be the trigger. Opponents need only indicate the desire for information - all relevant disclosure should be given automatically." IOW, they shouldn't have to ask the "right" question to find out this 3NT opening could be on 5-5 or 6-4 in the minors, and the strength range thereof. I think that the ACBL would say that "any hand that wants to play 3Nt" is not good enough. If you can't say what hand types would open with this bid (and what hand types, having an alternative in your system, would not), then you can't give the required full disclosure, and that alone would lead to an adverse ruling.

Glen points out that the ACBL cannot directly regulate natural opening bids. He's right about that, but it doesn't matter. This bid is not natural. (See the definition of natural NT bids in the GCC). Whether that makes it conventional can be debated, but I'm not so sure we even need to do that. The GCC prohibits playing conventions after an opening NT bid that could have less than 10 HCP. Glen plays Gerber over this 3NT. Can the bid be made on less than 10 HCP? Yes? Okay, it's an illegal agreement. Another question: why do you want to play this bid? I ask because if it comes out that the main reason is to "destroy opponents' methods" (the words of the GCC), it's again an illegal agreement.

But the bottom line, for me, is that even if it's legal, I don't believe your disclosure is adequate.

[DrTodd13]

If pressed, I think you'd find most people willing to say that any mixed strategy is a destructive method just because of their unfamiliarity or distaste for them. The whole destructive method thing is really a big club that the powers-that-be can use to squash anything they don't like. There are no rules for what should or should not be categorized this way which leaves the door open for a multitude of abuses.

[glen]

blackshoe, on Feb 26 2007, 05:23 PM, said:

But the bottom line, for me, is that even if it's legal, I don't believe your disclosure is adequate.

There are four elements of disclosure:

1) What you type into the white box when you make the bid
2) What you type into the white box if they click on the bid after it is made
3) What you send privately to the opponents without them asking
4) What you send privately to the opponents when they ask.

To help me understand how you feel the disclosure is inadequate could you please do two things:

1) Review previous postings on what the opponents are told (when the bid is made, and when they ask), and the four steps above and indicate for each step what is not being not adequately in your opinion, and how you would prefer it be done.

2) Assume that the sequence 1♥-4♥ is as described in the following:

cherdano said:

Assuming equal vulnerability and a 1st or 2nd seat opening, my partner would have a weakish shapely hand with 4 or 5 trumps. If 4, then he has a lot of shape (as he could make a mixed raise to 3♥ instead). We don't interpret weak as having no lower limit, the hand will have one good suprise as far as playing strength is concerned (a singleton, or good trumps, etc.). A flat 5332 hand would often prefer a mixed raise as well. On the other end of the spectrum, a hand with 5 trumps to an honor, an ace and a singleton would be considered too strong.

How should this 4♥ bid be described in each of the four steps given above?

[fred]

blackshoe, on Feb 26 2007, 10:23 PM, said:

If you are asked a question about your partnership's methods, you are required to fully and completely disclose all information arising from partnership agreement and partnership experience about the method.

I am sure you are right, but this is also not practical and not the way it works in real life (good thing).

Here is an example of why:

With some of my partners I play a DONT-like convention in which DBL of an opp's strong 1NT opener could be several types of hands:

- club one suiter
- diamond one suiter
- both majors
- a very good hand with spades
- 20+ balanced or semi-balanced
- any game forcing 1-suiter
- any game forcing 2-suiter

If I am asked to explain my DBL I do not provide a list like this (nor do I fully or completely disclose my experience with respect to each and every item on the list).

What I say is something like:

"Not penalty. If it goes Pass partner will probably bid 2C. I could have several types of hands. Would you like a list?".

In other words, I tell my opponents what I think they need to know and, if it turns out they think they need to know more, I open the does for further inquiry.

As far as I can tell most of my opponents seem to appreciate this sort of answer.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

officeglen, on Feb 27 2007, 02:42 AM, said:

How should this 4♥ bid be described in each of the four steps given above?

Glenn: There is a VERY big difference between the 4♥ raise and your 3NT opening:

I will readily admit that many players don't provide complete disclosure regarding the definition of a 4♥ raise, however, at least they know what their playing... I'd like to return to a direct quote that you made earlier in this discussion:

"6) I'm pleased to see eagerness to find out more about this approach, but we really don't have much more details on it, except when somebody would be kind enough to do a bridge browser report."

How can you hope to provide adequate disclosure when you don't understand the methods that you're playing.

You can't quantify your 3N opening
You can't qualify your 3N opening
You seem to be bidding on a whim.

I don't consider this type of behaviour appropriate. I'm all for granting broad discretion regarding choice of methods. At the same time, I think that people dragging out the weird ***** have a special obligation to be able to describe what they're playing. In your case,

1. You can't describe your methods
2. You and your partner appears to be playing different systems
3. If you provided the (ACBL) TDs with a complete description of your methods, they bounce the opening

In short, you shouldn't be playing these methods until you clean up your act

[glen]

One additional item - it is my contention, documented in the 2nd posting in this thread, that the opening is not a convention by the definitions of the bridge laws. Therefore I don’t agree with points like "illegal convention" or is the "convention" GCC legal or not, since these assume it is a convention, which it is not imo. When one starts wanting to regulate game bids that are to play, assuming they carry no special meanings, then one is going too far.

[inquiry]

I agree this is not a convention, and thus not an illegal convention. He truely desires to play 3NT and a weak partner is not pulling.